Paper Thin Algae Battery Kills Two Birds With One Stone

A new type of battery currently in development by a group of researchers from Sweden could do more than potentially revolutionize the battery industry; it could also help reduce unwanted blooms of a troublesome algae found throughout the Baltic and other parts of the world.

Cladophora algae, known to cause odors and reduce the quality of drinking water, is being utilized by the research team from Uppsala University in Sweden to create a paper thin battery that is not only high in performance, but also very environmentally friendly.

“We have long hoped to find some sort of constructive use for the material from algae blooms and have now been shown this to be possible,” says Maria Strømme, Professor in Nanotechnology and leader of the research group. “The battery research has a genuinely interdisciplinary character and was initiated in collaboration with chemist professor Leif Nyholm. Cellulose pharmaceutics experts, battery chemists and nanotechnologists have all played essential roles in developing the new material. This creates new possibilities for large-scale production of environmentally friendly, cost-effective, lightweight energy storage systems,” says Strømme.

While this new type of battery would likely initially be used as an alternative or replacement for lithium ion batteries, Gustav Nyström, a doctoral student in nanotechnology and the first author of the article, believes the technology could be used for other types of rechargeable batteries and may be available on the market within three years.

“These algae has a special cellulose structure characterised by a very large surface area,” says Nyström. “By coating this structure with a thin layer of conducting polymer, we have succeeded in producing a battery that weighs almost nothing and that has set new charge-time and capacity records for polymer-cellulose-based batteries. Our success in obtaining a much higher charge capacity than was previously possible with batteries based on advanced polymers is primarily due to the extreme thinness of the polymer layer.”